Film
Saving Private Ryan
- Director
- Steven Spielberg
- Certificate
- 15
- Running Time
- 169 mins
Based on a made-up story about a special mission to rescue one almost random private from certain death during the hellacious carnage of the Allied invasion of Europe, the opening of Saving Private Ryan is a stunningly bloody recreation of the D-Day landings. Amid this horrific battle, we pick out a few surviving grunts, led by sensitive Captain Tom Hanks and hardhead Sergeant Tom Sizemore, who are given the detail of finding Private Ryan (Matt Damon), whose three brothers have all been killed in the last few days.
The ensuing plot is an episodic struggle with a John Williams score and way too much God and country speechifying, but the battle scenes are terrifying, with hand-held, documentary-style camerawork that isn’t afraid to get guts all over the lens, and familiar war flick cliches powerfully subverted to highlight the tragedy of a just war rather than ranting at the ineptitude of its conduct. If it ultimately goes one sob story too far, this is nevertheless a great WWII movie. It’s back on screen in remastered 4K form to mark 75 years to the day (June 6) since World War Two’s D-Day Normandy landings – and 21 years since the film was released.
Our top newsletters emailed directly to you
